The Lair Of The Wolf
by crimsonpuddle
Summary: The Bad Wolf sees all, and Rose Tyler is the key. A better summary would ruin the 'fic. In fact, that kind of has. Set in series 1 - any more than that would be telling - but with spoilers for pretty much everything. Shipping Doctor/Rose.


**Disclaimer: **Did this happen in the series? No. So I clearly don't own the show. Oh, and I stole the idea from someone. Probably The Chibi's Are Stalking Me.

**A/N: **A little random, but never mind. Starts off with Nine, progresses into... well, you'll see. Spoilery for pretty much everything. It's pretty long too. I wrote it a while ago, then found it again today, all finished and ready to upload. Love it when that happens. Enjoy!

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**The Lair Of The Wolf**

Rose let out a shriek of surprise as the TARDIS came to a sudden stop, throwing her onto the floor.

'Doctor?' she called out, picking herself up and wandering out of her bedroom door, 'Why've we stopped?'

There was no answer. Sighing, Rose closed her bedroom door and headed out towards the consol room.

'Doctor?' she called again as she approached the room. She entered , but there was no sign of the Doctor. No trace that there ever _had _been a Doctor. There was no leather jacket hanging off the railings, no tools lying on the floor from his occasional tweak at the mechanism. 'Hello-o?' she sang out, then frowned as she received no answer.

Something was wrong, and Rose knew it. The TARDIS wasn't vibrating softly under her feet as usual. The Doctor - who she had left in the consolroom no less than five minutes ago - had vanished. She wandered out of the consol room and into several corridors, calling out 'Doctor!' as she did so, but there was no reply. She returned to dejectedly. Something told her the Doctor wasn't just hiding.

Rose started as a gust of wind picked up around her and the TARDIS door slammed shut. _'That wasn't open just now,'_ thought Rose.

'Doctor?' she called once more, walking quickly over to the door and pushing it open with a frown, but the Doctor was nowhere to be seen. She winced as the bright sunlight hit her eyes, a sudden heat radiating through her body.

All around her, clouds of gold-yellow dust were forming inches off the ground, knocked about by the wind. There was sand all around her, just miles and miles of yellow dust. She glanced around, but all she could see was the sand and the sky: cloudless, the sun marking midday high above her. The Doctor was nowhere to be seen.

'_He can't have just vanished,'_ Rose told herself, _'He's got to be around here somewhere.'_

She checked around the other side of the TARDIS, and walked around several times, calling out, but she could not find the Doctor. She re-entered the TARDIS, but he wasn't inside either.

Rose walked back out into the desert and sighed with frustration.

'Doctor?' she called out, 'Where are you?' When there was no reply, Rose's angry frown turned to a expression of worry. She took off her jacket and threw it down just inside the door, then started forwards into the sea of sand.

The Doctor's voice sounded in her mind: _'Rule one: don't wander off.' _But what else could she do? She looked back at the TARDIS and sighed, then continued back out into the sand.

She walked for what seemed like hours through the burning sand, casting dust-clouds to rise around her feet as she trudged silently on. She began to panic when she could no longer see the TARDIS behind her.

Where was he? She closed her eyes in an attempt to calm herself, and realised that her arms were burning in the sun, her legs were aching, and her throat was rough and dry. Why had she not thought to bring any water? It must have been her anxiousness to find the Doctor.

'_I wonder what that says about me…' _thought Rose grumpily. She opened her eyes and took a deep breath, then stumbled backwards with shock. There, on the sandy horizon, shimmering in the light, was the TARDIS.

'But - _What?!_' exclaimed Rose with wide eyes. She spun around on her heel. The TARDIS could no longer be seen behind her, but she was sure it was there somewhere. Wherever they were, it couldn't be so small that she'd crossed the entire planet already…

Rose audibly gasped as the TARDIS door opened, and two figures stepped out. She started walking forwards again, gradually picking up speed, until she broke into a run and launched herself as the two figures emerging from the tiny TARDIS sitting in the distance. She kicked up clouds of sand as she ran, but never slowed.

Soon, however, she realised that the TARDIS in the distance was not getting any bigger. It was still the pinprick size it had been, still sitting on the horizon as the two figures stood outside, talking soundlessly, laughing.

Rose stopped walking, and bent down to rest her hands on her knees, taking in deep breaths of hot air. Beads of sweat trickled down her forehead. When she looked up, the figures were closer. She could make them out now if she squinted. One of the people, a man on the right hand side, standing just outside the TARDIS, was a tall, thin, attractive man with dark brown hair. He wore a long, light brown trench coat, with his hands stuffed firmly in his pockets. And the other person, a girl on the left, was blond, shorter than the man, wearing black trousers… and a pink jacket…

It was Rose.

Rose did a double take, squinting at the figures, and then realised with a pang of shock who she was seeing.

_'But... how? Is that me in the future? And who's that man?'_ she asked herself. _'He came from the TARDIS. But where's the Doctor?_' But she had no time to discover the answer, because the next thing she knew, her double and the man were walking away. Rose stood up fully and began to chase after the man, but she found that the figures remained as far away as ever. She picked up speed and once more sprinted towards the two, but no matter whether she walked, ran or stayed perfectly still, the sand seemed to move with the pair, and she never found herself closer or further away to the couple.

She stopped dead in the sand, coughing with exhaustion, but the other man and her double didn't seem to notice her. Rose contemplated yelling something out, but refrained from doing so. Something was not right here.

The two people in the distance were still walking, their TARDIS out of sight. Rose did not move, but found that the couple were always straight in front of her, unclear but just big enough for her to make out a few details. The two were talking as they walked, but Rose could not make out the words. She watched curiously as the walked away but stayed perfectly still.

A sudden dust storm brewed up around her, and Rose's arms jumped up in front of her face, her eyes wrenched shut, shielding herself from the sharp sand attacking her skin. Once it had died down, Rose lowered her arms and opened her eyes, brushed away a few specks of sand on her cheeks, and glanced around anxiously, afraid she had lost her counterpart in the sandstorm. She was startled to see that the sandy horizon had been overshadowed by something in the distance. A mass of jagged rocks was now facing her, towering over the figures in front of her as they approached.

Rose felt a shiver down her spine as she approached with the other two. Looking down from the cliff, Rose took a step back with horror - though it made no effect. The figures had changed. The man, he seemed the same, though his trench-coat had vanished to reveal a blue suit. But the woman, Rose, she was no more. In her place, facing forwards, not communicating with the Doctor, was a taller, dark skinned girl with black hair. She wore a tightly fitted red leather jacket and a pair of dark blue jeans, and had her arms crossed stubbornly. The two were not talking, merely looking straight ahead as they walked. They came to a small entrance in the rocks, and slid through.

The surroundings blurred, and faded into black. Rose was then inside the dark cave, dimly lit by various gaps in the rocks above. The two were still walking in front of her, closer now but still oblivious to her. They walked on through the cold cave in stony silence, the tapping of their feet against the hard stone the only sound, never even looking the other's way. The man turned around once, and Rose froze in her tracks, but he seemed not to see her. Rose stood frozen in shock - but was still moving with the pair. The man's eyes were captured in her mind. They were brown, the colour of chocolate, but dark and hollow. They seemed lifeless somehow, as if aged in a day.

Rose shook the image out of her mind and looked back at the pair. A third had appeared. It was another man, in another suit. He looked younger than the first man, with lighter hair, and slightly shorter. He joined the pair at the woman's side, and walked with them in silence for a few seconds. They seemed to know he was there, but didn't care. The new man turned to the other man with empty eyes, and they shared the coldest of looks. The newer man took the woman's arm and led her off to the left. Rose chanced a glance at them, but they had gone, and she was determined to stay with this mysterious man. When she looked back to him, they were at the mouth of the cave, and they were closer together still. Rose felt as if she could reach out a touch him with just a few steps, but somehow knew she would not be able to.

The man, now dressed in brown, was accompanied again by another woman. She was taller again, with pale skin and red-brown hair, wearing jeans again but with a light brown jacket. The two seemed comfortable, and they walked in silent conversation, discussing a secret forbidden from Rose's ears. They walked leisurely out of the cave and didn't bat an eyelid as the scenery changed once more. Now, Rose stood behind the travellers under the cover of a green light - the sun filtering through amongst thousands of leaves above her. She could hear the birds chirping and various other rainforest-like noises, but still couldn't make out the conversation before her. She could feel them now; if she was to just reach out... one step forward... but her hands seemed glued to her sides.

The two people walked on and on through the forest, clambering over branches and wading through weeds. Rose never stopped, worried that she would surely lose sight of them if she did. Then, they stopped suddenly, and Rose felt a jolt in her stomach as she did so too. Silent, they turned and looked at each other curiously, and as Rose blinked, the scenery changed once more. They were now stood under the cover of darkness. A blanket had appeared in the place, wrapped around them so that the forest was invisible - if it was still there at all. Dots of white light illuminated the sky, and the man and woman's faces were lit dimly by the full moon in the sky. If they turned, if either of them looked her way, surely they would see her?

A figure entered from somewhere on the right - Rose wasn't sure quite where - and stood solidly behind the Doctor. It was just a silhouette against the night, an unknown being. Another shadow emerged, this time behind Donna, and another, and another, until Rose felt cornered by the creations of the night. Rose gasped as the man's head turned to the left. It seemed to happen suddenly, but too slowly, as if time had slowed down for that moment. The man looked at her, into her eyes, and Rose stumbled back, but this time she moved as she did so.

The man looked at her with his hollow, cold eyes, and she stared back defiantly. She cried out once with surprise as a million thoughts were forced suddenly into her mind. His thoughts. Names, places, people, aliens, and deaths, so many deaths. He continued to stare, unspeaking, as the other woman stared at him, and Rose's eyes were fixed on his also. His strong, definite eyes, the only definite thing in the Universes. The Doctor's eyes.

And then Rose knew what to do. As all the deaths and numbers and figures were pushed unkindly before her mind's eye, Rose made her choice. The man before her, the future Doctor, looked to his right, where someone else was approaching. Not just a shadow this time, but with the form of the Doctor again, this new Doctor, once again dressed in blue. The brown-suited Doctor stepped aside, and so did the woman with him - Donna, her name was. The blue-suited Doctor approached, and Rose reached out in longing. This Doctor felt different. Not only did he look different, somehow to her Doctor, but when she looked into his eyes, they weren't the sad blue ones of her own Doctor, or the cold brown ones of the other Doctor. They were warm, filled with anguish but also love, and they were hers.

And Rose knew what should be done. It would be hard, and there would be sorrow, but for the end to be right, this must happen. The Bad Wolf knew it, and now so did she. And as she thought those thoughts, the blue-suited future Doctor stepped forward, still gazing into her eyes, placed both hands on her hips, and pressed his lips to hers for a fraction of a second, barely long enough to leave a trace.

The scene erupted with light. A blinding white light, heavy on Rose's eyelids, surrounded all the figures, enveloping them all in a blanket of pure white. It converged upon them all, leaving nothing but the blue-suited Doctor in her view. He pulled away, still holding her tight, and the last thing Rose saw before the light forced her eyes closed was his smile.

The light is now golden, the room dark and cold.

She has returned. And she knows what to do.

'I can see everything...' she hears herself say, a tear falling down her cheek. But the room is unclear, she can hear the Doctor's voice - her Doctor - but her mind is too focused on what needs to be done. 'All that is... All that was... All that ever could be...'

She sees it, and she shapes it. She moulds the world as the Bad Wolf, into the perfect turn of events. She lays down the path, setting the story, and instructs the web of Time to do as she wishes. She takes the future in her hands and makes the slightest changes. A death here, a life given there, but none of it is important, it's all for the greater good. A change in path and a few lives lost, but what do they matter in the end?

She is speaking, and so is the Doctor, but she can only see what she has done. His voice is an echo. He will die now, and the future Doctor will have his time. And that's fine. But Rose... Rose must forget. So Bad Wolf reaches into the depths of her mind, she removes the spell binding them, and she enters the Doctor mind instead, preparing him, shielding itself against his mind.

Rose falls to the floor, unknowing of the Bad Wolf.

It's work is done.

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**A/N: **Hope you weren't too disappointed by that ending. Did anyone see it coming? If you honestly did, you can borrow my chibi!Nine for a day. Only a day though. He's mine.

Oh, and if you're wondering, my inspiration for the kiss bit popped up when I was listening to 'The Greatest Story Ever Told' from the Series 4 Soundtrack. It works with the ending quite well. So does 'A Dazzling End'.


End file.
